Not to put any extra pressure on his players, but head coach Chris Bond will be highly disappointed if the Farr Fabricating Cougars fail to grab gold.
The bantam Tier 1 Cats are hosting a five-team minor hockey tournament that starts today at the Kin Centre. Bond's lofty expectations stem from the fact that the Cougars are the only Tier 1 club in the mix. Other teams in attendance are Williams Lake, Smithers, Fort St. John and Quesnel.
"We want to win, for sure," Bond said. "It's one of the lower-calibre tournaments we've been to. Basically because of geography reasons, not a lot of teams wanted to come up."
The Cougars play their league games in the Okanagan Mainline Amateur Hockey Association and those Okanagan opponents all have to travel to Prince George once as part of the OMAHA schedule.
"They don't want to do it twice," Bond said. "And usually we do get lucky with a few Vancouver teams or Alberta teams but there are four or five other big tournaments this same weekend so we've kind of got the odds stacked against us."
All round robin games will be held at Kin 2. The 13- and 14-year-old Cougars will play their opener against Williams Lake, with the puck-drop planned for 10:45 a.m. Later today (6:15 p.m.), the Cats will take on Smithers.
On Saturday, Prince George will meet Fort St. John at 10 a.m. and Quesnel at 6:15 p.m. Semifinal games (first vs. fourth and second vs. third) will be played early Sunday morning and the championship final will start at 1 p.m.
Members of the Cougars are Darren Hards, Mitchell Williams, Dylan Krahn, James Gordon, Darian Long, Garrett Hilton, Jax Bailey, Devin Sutton, Bailey Mcfaul, Jarin Sutton, Carl Ewert, Jared Stevens, Brett Wakabayashi, Jesse Pomeroy, Jeremy Gervais, Jacob Sweet, Jamie Ferguson and Mateo Albinati.
